1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information managing apparatus that manages a plurality of jobs. More particularly the present invention relates to production and management of job information that identifies a job from among a plurality of jobs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-320851 discloses a recent information communication network that includes a plurality of host apparatuses that share a terminal device such as a printer. The terminal device is provided with a function for reliably managing the print data received from one or more host apparatuses. For example, a network printer receives a plurality of items of print data from one or more host apparatuses over the network. For each item of print data received, the printer analyzes the item of print data to produce a print job that includes data in an intermediate format and attributes necessary for identifying the data. This print job is stored into a RAM (volatile) in the printer. The RAM usually stores a plurality of print jobs that are waiting for subsequent processing. The print jobs are assigned unique identification numbers by which a desired print job can be identified during the subsequent processing.
A print job includes an integer-storing area in which the identification number for the print job is stored. Identification numbers are generated in incremented manner such that each new print job has its unique identification number. Conventionally, the identification numbers are created on a RAM. Therefore, when electric power to the RAM is shut down, the identification numbers on the RAM are lost. When the printer is turned on again, new print jobs may be assigned the identification numbers that were used before the printer was turned off. As a result, when a host apparatus sends a request to refer the history of print jobs, more than one print job having the same identification numbers could be referred.
One way of solving the aforementioned drawbacks is to produce the identification number on a FLASH memory or an EEPROM. However, this way suffers from a problem that every time a print job is created, an integer-storing area on a FLASH memory or EEPROM must be referenced. Thus, this way is almost impractical. Moreover, the aforementioned conventional art assumes that a printer is allowed to produce as many of print jobs as the integer-storing area can hold the number of times of production of print jobs. If the number of times of production of print jobs exceeds the capacity of the integer-storing area, then more than one print job could have the same identification number.